-
He spat blood and took a deep breath, filled his lungs deeper and deeper until they strained against his ribs, and then he filled them more. He clenched his fists until the strands of muscle in his forearm squeezed his shattered bone back in place, and the tissues met and mended. He felt the muscle fuse. He felt the bone knit and harden.
The leviathan was as good with boats as Flint was, but now it was determined. Three times it had tried to hoist itself up onto the ship, and three times it had fallen back into the water. This time it would not fail, dropping back until its head was almost completely submerged. This time it would surge up. This time it would crush these insolent gnats.
Flint tensed his body, one muscle at a time, and raised his arms. For all its size, all its power, the leviathan knew nothing of strength. He roared, and he charged. As he ran his footfalls grew heavier, pounding the deck, threatening to shatter the wood beneath his feet. At first he felt it, the new weight of his bones resisting him, pulling him down, but then he grew stronger, and gravity could not hold him.
The leviathan surged up, pulling on the ship.
Flint leapt.
Its eyes widened and it recoiled mid-leap, opening its maw and snatching him out of the air. It chomped down on him, and the brute disappeared. Pleased, the leviathan let itself drop down into the water again while it resumed preparations to crush the ship. Its victory was at hand.
And then it shivered and lashed, and when it opened its mouth again Flint was still there, having wedged himself between two of its horrific teeth. He yanked one tooth out of its moorings, again washing himself with a gush of blood, and then once again he leapt – not out of the monster’s mouth, but deeper inside it.
The leviathan winced away from the ship and turned, snapping its mouth closed and withdrawing its tendrils. The ship bobbed free as the monster dropped down into the raging sea.
-
Luned tried not to look at her leg, or what was left of it. She tried not to think of the things she’d witnessed – the friends she’d seen die. Blue, Roberson, Gaspar. Aeril. They were all gone, along with sailors she hadn’t known as well. The rain was growing lighter, and she knew now that it meant the leviathan was retreating, but it was doing so with Flint in its mouth.
There was blood everywhere, and she knew it was hers. She pressed her palm into a pool of it, but it had mixed with water and so it did not cling to her skin. It would not do. The surface of the deck would not do. The pain was unbelievable. She dragged herself a foot at a time, screaming at the pain but refusing to look down.
“I can fix this,” she prayed. “I can fix this.”
She felt light-headed as she reached the doorway. The door was gone now, and the hallway was warped, the square frames made into twisted mockeries of themselves, rhombuses instead of rectangles. Rain poured in from every seam and crack, and she could see the sky through holes in the wall. She dragged herself on, shivering. Something that had once been a part of her caught on the door frame and she screamed her lungs ragged, but she didn’t let that stop her.
She reached up and struggled, pulling the bed sheets off the mattress. “Thank you,” she whispered raggedly. “Thank you thank you thank you.”
They were dry.
She stretched the sheet out and touched her fingers to the remnants of her leg, trying so hard not to think about what she felt, what was soft and what was hard, what was warm and what was cold, what wet and what dry. Her fingers came back so bloody, and her hands were shaking.
She dragged her fingertips over the material of the sheets, and every line was difficult and excruciating. She felt consciousness abandoning her.
“Please,” she said, pressing her hand to the bloody symbols. “Please.”
-
Muir opened his eyes and inhaled sharply. He lifted his head and looked around, kicking his feet, and found himself tangled up in netting. He realized he was in his hammock. He searched himself, found his needles. He was feeling raw, but now wasn’t the time.
“Gaspar,” he said.
“What the fuck is going on,” Roberson said. “Where am…what the fuck is going on. Muir what the fuck is going on?”
The younger sailor dropped out of his hammock and stumbled away. He was dressed in his nightwear, and he touched his chest and his stomach. “I think I died,” Roberson whispered.
Muir didn’t care. He kicked his legs over the side and dropped out of the hammock, and bounded out, up the stairs onto the deck. Blue climbed very slowly and carefully out of the rigging and dropped to the deck, looking at her hand and wrist, closing and opening her fingers as if expecting them to fall off. She looked up at him, her eyes empty, and tears formed at the edges.
Aeril descended the dry steps from the sterncastle like a sleepwalker, touching her shoulder. She paused and turned, dropping to one knee to help a sailor sit up. It was Gaspar, looking every bit as dazed as the rest of them, and Muir charged him. They embraced, speaking over one another in too-fast Fallieni, touching one another’s faces and chests.
“Are we dead?” Blue asked at last. “Is this…?”
“No,” Luned said from the sterncastle doorway.
Dawn cracked over the horizon, and fresh sunlight stretched across the deck. The clouds were broken, patchy and fluffy and white, and the sea was calm and glistened in the first light. The scribe stepped out on deck, and Muir immediately dragged her into a fierce three-person hug with Gaspar. “What did you do?” he whispered.
“I fixed it,” Luned said with a tired smile. “It’s what I do.”
“Where’s Flint?” Muir asked.
He looked up at her face, and she looked away from him. Her smile wavered, and a rush of tears began to roll down her cheeks. “I couldn’t fix everything,” she said, and her voice cracked.
-
“Wow,” Aeril said.
“Gross,” Muir agreed.
“That’s not what I meant,” Aeril snapped. “It’s just…”
“I can still hear you,” Flint growled.
The brute was sitting cross-legged in bed with his back to the headboard, eyes closed and hands on his knees. He was naked from the waist up, mainly because no shirt on board would fit him anymore. If he was muscular before, he was hulking now. An empty vial was set on the sheets in front of him.
“I don’t understand,” Luned said, wrapping her arms around herself. “Why can’t I undo it?”
“Part of me now,” Flint said without opening his eyes. “Not just physical. Can’t separate without undoing me.”
“Why’s he talking like that?” Muir said.
“As far as we can tell, the Swaysong is in a constant state of adapting him based on his wants and needs,” Luned said. “He needed to be stronger to kill the leviathan, so it made him stronger, for example. But it doesn’t just stop when the need goes away. If he doesn’t concentrate, it changes him based on every random thought or feeling. If he loses focus, he dies.”
“You killed that thing?” Aeril said.
Flint nodded once, slowly. “Drowned it.”
“How do you drown a giant fish?” Muir said.
“Stabbed it in the gills with its own teeth,” Flint said. “It died. Sank. Stayed inside it, where there was air to breathe. Woke up here.”
“Holy shit.”
“Yes,” Flint said.
“Wait,” Muir said. “Isn’t he going to need to sleep eventually? Can you sleep?”
Flint shook his head slowly. “Hard to move. Hard to do anything without breaking bones. Hard to breathe. Will die soon.”
“No you won't,” Luned said quietly. “I wrote to Bleddyn. He’s going to find a way to fix it.”
“Hmm,” Flint said.
“What does that mean?” Luned said.
“Unlikely,” he sighed. “Considered problem. No answer except transcendence. Insufficient time.”
“Transcendence?” Aeril asked, looking to Luned.
The scribe shook her head. “He keeps mentioning it. Honestly, even with him talking like that it’s hard to keep up. It isn’t just changing his body, it’s changing his mind. I can only imagine how slow we seem to him right now.”
“Very slow,” Flint agreed.
“Then you tell us,” Aeril said. “If there’s something you can do, there must be something we can do to help. We owe you that much.”
“Nothing on this world,” Flint said. “Only ends are death, transcendence. Do not wish either. Wish to stay with Luned. Outside help a possibility, no means to communicate. Positive divine intervention unlikely. Wait.”
Flint’s eyes snapped open, and he looked at his arms. “Of course. So stupid.”
Luned glanced down at his bracers, then up at his face, slowly lowering her arms. “What?”
“Shasande,” Flint said. “Great foresight. Impressive.”
“Shasande?”
“Unimportant, found salvation,” the brute said. “This is going to hurt. Do not be alarmed.”
Luned look to Aeril and Muir, and they looked back. Everyone was clearly alarmed. Flint stared at the strange pieces of armor for a long moment, and then he took a slow, steadying breath. He glanced up at Luned. “I will long to touch you without these one day,” he told her. “Do not let me try to remove them. Ever. The vambraces mean life on this plane. Their removal means death or transcendence. Understand?”
“No,” Luned admitted. “I mean, I understand what you’re saying, but…” She shook her head. “I won’t let you try to take them off.”
“Good,” Flint said. “I will miss the power. Would miss you more. Might not realize it, hard to say. Difficult to remember being imperfect.”
“Did he just say that he’s perfect?” Muir said.
“Almost,” Flint said. “Shame.”
There was a sudden, soft whirring noise, and the three backed away from Flint cautiously when they realized the noise was coming from his bracers. He sighed and turned his gaze down on the alien tools. After a few seconds, the whirring noise was joined by a series of sharp clicks, and Flint took a few more steadying breaths.
“Flint,” Luned said. “What’s happening?”
“Vambraces are tapping prominent veins in wrists and forearms,” he said. “Will purify blood of Swaysong. Constant process, perpetual. Painful.”
“What do you mean, perpetual?”
“Body produces substance now,” he said. “Never fully removed, only reduced.”
“Will it be enough?”
“Yes,” Flint said. “Need you to leave now, please. Don’t want you to witness this. Pride.”
“Okay,” Luned said. “Okay."
He looked up at her reassuringly, and she searched his face for a long moment. She told herself that he was still in there, somewhere, but there was no sign of it.
They left, and fifteen minutes later he began to scream.
-
Flint woke up drenched in cold sweat. When he stepped out on deck he found the lanterns lit and the moon hanging high amidst countless stars, nary a cloud in sight. The crew was below decks, and he slipped past their sleeping forms on the way to the galley. He was surprised to find Blue awake and cooking.
“How’re ya feelin’?” she asked quietly.
"I'm myself again," he said. He held up one of the vambraces pointedly. “It hurts.”
The dwarf raised her eyebrows.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she said. “I’ve just…I guess I’ve never heard ya complain.”
She was even more astounded when he smiled, even if only a little. “Then you can guess how much it hurts.”
Blue nodded slowly, setting a plate of cheese and salt jerky in front of him. She watched as he began tearing in, and he winced every time he had to hold the jerky tight to bite off a chunk.
“You saved us,” Blue said quietly and suddenly.
Flint shook his head. “Luned saved us.”
“Yes, but so did you,” she said. “Thank you.”
Flint muttered quietly to himself for a moment, paused, and then said, “You’re welcome.”
A long moment of silence passed between them while Flint ate. “Aren’t you tired?” he asked at last.
“Yes,” Blue said, “but I’m afraid to dream. I died.”
“Hmm,” Flint said. “So did I. I slept fine.”
“How?”
Flint shrugged. “I’m alive,” he said. “And the living need sleep. We’ll all die eventually Blue, but not today.”
She nodded. “Not today.”
“Go to sleep,” he said. “Where’s Luned?”
“She was on the sterncastle,” Blue said. “Give her some time, Flint.”
“I have to apologize,” he said, moving to his feet. “Sleep.”
“I’ll try,” Blue sighed.
-
She'd had a lot of time to think –– too much time, really. It had been hard at first to process anything other than Flint's horrific screams, and once he fell quiet, it took all the control she could muster not to check in on him and make sure he wasn't dead. She thought for sure that if she opened that door she'd discover him withered away and twisted in on himself, racked by the same gruesome death he gave Ezura. Luned should have savored the irony in that, she supposed. He'd betrayed her, after all. But she just didn't have it in her to be bitter, and that just made her more frustrated than what he'd done in the first place. She felt entitled to anger. She wished she could rage like Resolve did, finally understanding the nature of the exorcist's temper. It must have felt glorious to focus emotion so concisely and dispel it with something as simple as a punch.
But thinking of Resolve only caused her to remember what Flint said so many weeks ago. He and she had a "dynamic", he'd said, and a hot rush of panic buried itself deep in Luned's chest. She wondered if he'd been dishonest about anything else, and then she realized they'd never actually talked about those things. Not for the first time, she became painfully aware of just how poorly she really knew him.
Apparently he'd kept her out of his life for a reason, and she wondered if she shouldn't have been so ready to share hers.
Simply put, she was at a loss.
The scribe took a slow, deep breath, the calm, cloudless night lost on her. She didn't see the perfect shade of indigo overhead which she had yet to mimic with her inks, nor the nameless color of the glittering starlight reflected off the waves. Her mind was too full to notice the things that usually helped her reach contented distraction.
She still didn't even understand what she did back there. She'd seen how that spell functioned even on Swaysong, it should have been contained. She finally began to understand the full gravity of what exactly Bleddyn had talked her into, and she wasn't sure how she felt about it. What else was she capable of? Were there limits, and how could she even go about finding them if there were? What could she possibly do with that amount of power?
Feeling overwhelmed, Luned forced herself to focus on the other issue at hand: Muir. He was, understandably, a mess. He should have died twice in just the past couple days, claimed by the sea both times, and here he was, still on the ship. She imagined him in fetal position in her cabin, Gasper at his wits end in attempts to calm him enough to sleep. She wasn't an expert, but she imagined all the drugs in his seemingly endless stash couldn't ease that kind of trauma.
At least in that case, she did know what to do with this new power of hers. Luned reached into her pocket to extract her journal and opened it, careful not to lose any of the loose pages to the wind. She found one particular folded letter and peeked inside to find it still lacking response. She sighed and heard the creak of hinges over the waves, followed someone's heavy footsteps on deck.
She knew that gait.
It circled around and climbed up onto the sterncastle with her. Luned stood frozen, not ready to face him. She wasn't ready.
But she looked over her shoulder anyway, exceedingly cautious, to see Flint approach. He was solemn, as if facing a judge for sentencing. But that's what it was, wasn't it?
Luned stared at him wordlessly for a long moment, dark circles drawn under her tired eyes. "You look like you," she finally said, as if she'd expected a monster.
-
Flint nearly reminded her, himself, how appearances could be deceiving, but he didn't need anything else counting against him right now. "No apology could ever possibly make up for what I've done," he began, "but––"
"Stop," Luned interrupted, and he did. "I'm not ready for this yet." A long silence followed, and if she didn't know him so well, she might have missed the slight slip in composure which communicated just how hard he took that. "Sorry," she added weakly, her voice nearly lost to the crash of the waves against the hull of the ship.
In the next stretch of uncomfortable silence, she realized she still held her journal open, and she fumbled to tuck away the open letter and close it. She clutched it to her chest, both defensively and secretively. "I just need a little more time, but I'll come find you soon, and we'll talk. I promise."
The brute nodded, at a loss for words, and turned to leave. He felt her watch as he descended the sterncastle until he went out of sight, heading back downstairs to his cabin.
Lying in the dark, the alien sensation of loneliness set in. Flint couldn't help but focus on the fact that she was supposed to be there with him. But all he could do was wait, and so he did.
-
Luned kept her promise and, just as the first hint of the waking sun washed the sky gray-blue through Flint's tiny window, there was a timid knock at his door. When he opened it to let her in she stayed frozen at the threshold, and a quiet moment passed between them before she broke the silence.
"I'm mad at myself," she said, barely a whisper in the sleeping hallway. "I want to hate you –– for risking yourself, for keeping it from me –– but I can't. Not until I hear what you have to say."
This was cause for hope, but the fact that she wouldn't enter the cabin unsettled Flint. He noticed her fidget as she stood in the cramped corridor, not much more than a familiar silhouette in the low light. He could tell she was still dressed; not much rest had been had that night by anyone, he was sure. The brute thought, then replied. "Are you ready to talk?"
The girl hesitated. "No, I…" she trailed off, unable to articulate. A hint of impatience laced her words, or maybe distraction, and it caught Flint's attention like a red flag.
"Is there something else?" he asked, bracing himself against the frame of the doorway. The pressure made him wince and he bit it back.
She was quiet for a second or two and he thought she might have noticed. He couldn't quite make out her expression in the shadows but he imagined a soft frown, pity he couldn't accept from her, and he almost spoke again to defend against it. But she surprised them both when she moved toward him, her ghosted silhouette sweeping up to him in the darkness, and he felt her hand brush feather-light up his chest and neck until her thumb blindly traced his jawline. Her lips met his, warm and soft and far too brief, and she quickly pried herself away with that same strange impatience he'd sensed before.
She took a deep breath as if psyching herself up for something. "There's something I need to do first," Luned said, having retreated far back enough into the hallway that her voice seemed distant. "You should get some sleep."
Now Flint knew that there certainly was something else and he followed her down the hall, wincing as his hands unconsciously groped the wall for some sense of direction. "Luned," he said sternly, perhaps a bit louder than she would have liked. "What is it?"
The scribe kept walking as if hoping to shake him off, but when she realized it was no use, she stopped. "Muir can't stay," she said, the determination in her voice ominous. "We're sending him back early, but I have to make sure it's safe first."
"How?"
Luned sighed. "I wrote Ags. Aurelius is there. I'm just going to… scare him a bit. To make sure we'll all have safe passage."
After facing a leviathan together and emerging relatively unscathed, a rude tiefling should have seemed like a cake walk, but Flint was not up to the challenge yet. He was tired, sore, and needed time to recuperate before putting scoundrels in their places. "Are you sure?"
They were walking downstairs into the cargo hold where Agnie had linked the door the day of the supply drop-off, and it only grew darker the deeper they went. "What's the point of power if I can't keep the people I love safe?" Luned asked rhetorically without slowing.
Flint sighed. Companionship with the scribe was proving to mean episodic deja vu of Ettermire's sewers, but as he was then, he was now: too deep to turn back. "Fine. But I'm coming with you."
-
Aurelius sat, perched on the window-sill of the kaleidoscopic nightmare that was Agnie's parlour, working his way through another cigarette and muttering to himself angrily.
His bladed and leather clad form crouched on the gaudily painted sill, like a malignant spider, twirling a silver pocket watch on its chain in his slender fingers- he had bobbed the timepiece from an Aleraran nobleman a few days before, and hadn't got round to pawning it yet. The shining glass face told him what he already knew; Luned had kept him waiting for over an hour. The thought turned his mouth into a vicious snarl, fangs bared. Who the pikin' Hell does she think she is, summoning me like some kind of servant?
But, the fact Luned had requested his presence at all had the warlock peery, suspicious, and just curious enough to ignore his paranoia as it screamed at him from inside his brain-box. Despite the fact he was still healing after the chaos up in Salvar with the witch-hunters, he had come anyway. Besides, there's a brothel and a pub downstairs, so it ain't all bad.
Ags herself was busy bustling around the room, singing softly with her musical voice, flitting from here to there in flashes of bright fabrics and golden curls. Killin' time, the tiefling snapped mentally, twirling the small silver watch, watching the riot of colours coming through the stained glass as it bounced off the silver face, and the myriad tokens and mystical knick-knacks tied around his wrists. But the distraction lasted mere seconds before the tiefling finished his dozenth cigarette. With a sharp whistle and a frustrated gesture, he got the attention of his grotesque little familiar. Junior raised its albino head, tiny sutured eyes turning to the warlock who had raised it from death. Baring tiny needle fangs in a hideous approximation of a smile, it took to the air on sable pinions- as it crossed the room, it received a tender pat on the head from the silk and lace-swathed fairy Princess. Her lack of disgust at Junior's appearance went a long way to endearing the barmy chit to the Cager, he realised idly. The animated albino foetus had certainly taken to her.
Flapping over to its master's coat on crow wings, laid over the back of the hideously garish, pink pastel chaise long (it had taken Agnie six or seven times before Aurelianus had remembered the ridiculous name of the piece of furniture), Junior started rummaging. It emerged a moment later, a silver cigarette case clutched awkwardly in its scalpel-fingered hands, barely managing to carry the weight of the item. But with awkward, jerky movements, the familiar succeeded in bringing the cigarettes to the waiting hands of its master. Running his free hand through the blood-red quills on his head, the tiefling snapped open the case, drawing out another hand-rolled cigarette. Clamping it between his pale lips, he lit the tip with a small burst of Hellfire from his palm.
Agnie's frenzied cleaning and rearranging finally grated on the tattooed warlock's last nerve.
"For pike's sake, will you park your arse!" he snapped.
All he got in way of a response was an angry pout, before the rainbow whirlwind was in motion again.
This time, however, she was moving over to the doorway that led to her bedroom. The half-breed remembered what had happened to him last time he had tried to peek through the entrance.. but this time, as she pushed the door open, it revealed a swirling vortex shimmering with a variety of luminous colours.
Sighing, he tried to block Ags out, waiting for Luned to show up and finally lann him why she wanted to see him, of all people. Junior clambered nimbly up the segmented armour covering his left arm, somehow navigating around the barbs and spikes covering the leather. Sitting on his shoulder like some monstrous little gargoyle, the little creature whisper-hissed something in the half-demon's pointed, pierced ear. It spoke in the Infernal tongue of the Hells, a language Aurelius himself was fluent in. His master nodded at the sibilant sounds.
"Is that a fact?" he smirked, getting up from the sill, shaking out his legs to get some feeling back in them.
Just as Junior had warned him, two figures emerged. The abomination had hissed that they were both powerful, both tainted with some.. odd forms of power. Aurelianus quirked an eyebrow as the meek scribe emerged, along with her minder- Flint, the brawny Salvaran basher. Junior wasn't usually wrong, what with his Hell-spawned senses, but unless he'd missed a whole lot in the past few weeks, this pair of addle-coved rubes didn't have any sort of power on their sides. Or any brains, he smirked, remembering how they had wound up in his debt.
Blowing a cloud of smoke into the heavily perfumed air, the tiefling stood before the pair, scanning them with his snake-like eyes: They looked much the same as when he'd seen them aboard the ship a few weeks back, but there was definitely something off about them.. something about the awkward way they avoided each other's gaze..
The half-breed barked out a harsh laugh, his fangs displayed in mirth.
"Bloody 'ell, but you two are adorable. Could nick the sexual tension with a chiv. What's the matter Flint- still not stickin' your pike in 'er?"
The human's eyes narrowed, but he kept tight-lipped.
Shaking his quilled head softly, the tiefling looked over Luned. "And let's not even start on you, my dirty little tease. I know 'ow you like to play with the blokes," he grinned, winking lewdly. "After all, I--"
"Shut up."
Luned's voice cut through his own, giving Aurelius pause. He blinked. Had she just interrupted him? Really!?
"I'm not in the mood to listen to you today," she sighed, sounding wearier than her appearance gave credit to.
Toying with the obsidian rings in his eyebrow, and trying to figure out whether to laugh, or knife the bitch, Aurelius paused. The warlock didn't expect anyone to interrupt him, let alone the spineless little chit he tormented for fun. The novelty of the situation was enough to keep him quiet, listening. Junior sensed its master's quiet, smouldering anger and hissed malevolently at the pair of humans. The tiny scalpels scored the leather armour beneath its grip.
"Alright," he allowed, blowing another stream of smoke, "then 'ow about you tell me what the pike I'm doin' 'ere?"
The mousy little girl drew herself up, obviously preparing herself for whatever speech she had practiced to herself for this moment. The plane-touched waited with bemused irritation. His gaze flickered to a pair of gauntlets enclosing the Salvaran's fists- they were new. Something about them didn't sit right with Aurelius, and he found one of his hands straying to the demon-hide grip of his Baatorian knives. The air in the room took on a tense quality, but no-one made a move.
"Aurelius, we didn't come here looking for a fight. I will keep my promise for the favour I owe you, but right now I need your word that you will leave us and that ship in peace, and that anyone who needs passage through Ags will remain safe."
The warlock spun the silver pocket-watch on its chain, mulling over Luned's little speech. A sneer of distaste curled the corner of his lip.
"You brought me all the way 'ere, just 'cause you're peery I'm goin' to do somethin' to your pikin' ship?!" His free hand tensed into a fist, the fingerless leather gloves encasing his hand smoking a little at the edge.
Junior let out something between a shriek and a whisper, flapping his wings angrily.
"If any body on that tub should be worried about me, it's you," he snarled, jabbing a finger at the chit. "But I'll tell you what, Lune- seein' as you did send me off with Duffy to pen the witch-hunters in the Dead-book- I'll make you a one-time offer."
He could see the suspicion writ large across the pairs' faces. They didn't trust the half-breed at all. And they were right not to.
"You and me 'ead through to the bedroom, right now. I'll pike you like Flint 'ere wishes 'e could, and in return, I'll wipe both your slates clean. You'll never 'ave to see me again." a vicious smirk split his marble-skinned visage in a predator's grin. "If not, you can bar your bone-box, and piss off out of my way."
"You bas--" Flint started, muscles bulging beneath his shirt.
"Ah ah ah! Bite your tongue, basher," Aurelius grinned, wagging a finger at the stocky human. "I wanna 'ear 'er answer."
"This is exactly what I was talking about. This isn't happening anymore. Is that clear?"
His laughter was all the answer she needed. She folded her arms across her chest, glaring at the tiefling with undisguised hatred.
"Is that so, luv? Well, tell me this, little Luned. Who's goin' to stop me?"
The Baatorian knife was in his hand in one fluid motion, serrated edge reflecting the rainbow lights in the room. Even as the green-steel blade appeared, his mouth filled with incandescent, liquid black fire, lapping up from the edges of his lips.
Even through the Hellfire, his mocking smile was visible.
-
His smirk didn't last long. Luned's crossed arms tightened and one nervous finger traced an invisible symbol against the thin cloth of her blouse, hand trembling as she conjured a new, untested spell. Even if only for the blessing of Carcosa's seemingly boundless power, it worked.
Before he knew what hit him, Aurelius found himself tossed like nothing across the full expanse of the room, taking furniture with him. His body slammed through the chaise, toppling it with shin-shattering force against his legs, and his arm took out a lamp. He didn't notice the shriek of it crashing against the hardwood floor as he quickly found himself crushed against the bright paisley wallpaper and cream wainscoting. No, not against –– nearly through, as wood splintered around his frame and torn paper crinkled under him as he cautiously tested his limbs.
Except, he realized after some effort, he couldn't move. The tiefling's head spun from the impact and somewhere in the background he heard a musical little cry, undoubtedly Agnie's response to the mess in her freshly organized flat. Once he regained his wits he grinned anew, blinking away the blur of impact-induced vertigo to see Luned stroll right up to him through the wreckage. Flint followed cautiously, as if he'd expected that even less than Aurelius did, with a hand fidgeting nervously at his pocket.
The demon laughed, hoarse at first, but soon the trashed room filled with full-bodied guffaws. It was simply too priceless. "C'mon, luv, enough of the love taps. 'it me like you mean it!"
The scribe stopped several feet away from him, well out of arm's reach, a dark determination settled over her typically timid features. He nearly laughed again, but before he could, his breath caught in his throat. His lungs remained collapsed, diaphragm unresponsive as every muscle in his horrid body ached to gasp for air. He took this odd turn of events with as much stride as he possibly good, maintaining that sinister smirk on his face as he struggled to keep composure. Of course, this ordeal was endlessly amusing to a depraved creature like himself and he ached to laugh as much as to breathe, but he had to admit that there was an inherent discomfort in losing control over one's basic functions.
Luned watched intently as his smirk weakened, his frame pinned against the wall just as he'd done to her at the tannery in Ettermire. In his forced stillness, Aurelius suddenly became aware of something sharp in his right thigh, a hot pain that began to spread; he couldn't look, but he assumed it was some part of the wall's infrastructure having penetrated his layers of leather. He stared back, intrigued by the new calculating chill in those narrowed blue eyes. Soon spots danced in the corners of his vision, threatening to wash over him with darkness, and just as he thought she might actually take it that far, she spoke.
"You will leave us alone," she reiterated. "And you will leave the ship in peace, and there will be no trouble for anyone who chooses to use Agnie's service. I am not the person you knew before –– your games will not work anymore. Is that understood?"
Suddenly the air returned to Aurelius' lungs and he gasped involuntarily, chest heaving as his body gratefully reclaimed some precious oxygen. She released him from his pinned position against the wall and he chuckled through a cough as he found his footing again, only faltering slightly. The pain in his leg spread and he shifted weight to the other foot, realizing she'd broken some of the blades on his vicious body armor. That displeased him considerably, but he figured he could displease her even more. It was one of his many unique talents.
"Pff! Really, luv? This is the best you've got –– auto-erotic asphyxiation?" The words dripped from his lips like acid, and they accomplished just what he wanted.
She lifted her right arm, drew something so concisely and elegantly in the air that it seemed naught more than the flick of a finger, and that was the end of their discussion.
Aurelius only registered a split second of the blow as it slammed him clear through the surface behind him, across the space on the other side, and into the next wall. His form crumpled like a rag doll under a barrage of dislodged bricks, dust rising in a cloud before settling over the fairy princess' pristine furniture. The scribe had singlehandedly transformed the apartment befitting of royalty into a warzone in the course of a very short, very tense conversation, and no sign of consciousness offered itself from Aurelius' resting place under the rubble.
Ags did not appreciate this turn of events at all. "How dare you invite yourself here and attack my guest," she started, and with a frightfully impatient coldness so unlike herself, Luned lifted her hand toward the flouncing fey.